AI & SaaS Pavilion at Startup Mahakumbh Showcased a Myriad of Opportunities for Startups in India
Mar 20, 2024
BusinessWire India
New Delhi [India], March 20: Startup Mahakumbh, India's largest celebration of the startup ecosystem on Day 2 focused on industry panel discussions, network collaborations and fire side chat sessions at Bharat Mandapam, New Delhi. The second day of Startup Mahakumbh commenced with an inaugural address from Ajit B Chavan, Government e Marketplace (GeM), Government of India highlighted about the vision to empower startups for a thriving tomorrow.
The second day witnessed a diverse range of activities such as powerful reverse pitch sessions, industry discussions, and sessions across 10 pavilions including AI + SaaS, D2C/Consumer brands, Agritech, Fintech, Deep Tech, Biotech & Pharma, Incubators, Climate Tech, E-sports, and B2B Manufacturing.
The first session around AI for developer productivity discussed about customer sensitivities around data memorization, public cloud getting expensive, data protection laws impacting startups who are building customer and business solutions, and how vendors are harvesting customer data to train their AI models. During the session, Sridhar Vembu, Founder and CEO, Zoho Corporation said, "Contextual analysis is important for developing AI based business models. When you mix AI with contextual elements, it empowers you to take action and address the challenges. And, because we expose our models to be customized by users, they feed into the narrow, small, medium, and large language models to develop feature rich products." He further emphasized that "You cannot talk to LLMs without combining business and strong research data."
"The second day of Startup Mahakumbh for us was all about engaging with the startups and investors. We highlighted collaborations that demonstrate the potential of AI for businesses, alongside discussing the government's vision for supporting these startups in their innovation efforts. It was gratifying to participate in insightful and impactful discussions regarding the application of AI within the startup ecosystem," said Hari Balasubramanian, Angel Investor & Mentor.
On empowering the startup community, Dr. Pankaj Dikshit, Chief Technology Officer, GeM in discussion with Rajiv Kumar Srivastava, Addl. CEO and Chief Buyer Officer-Central Buyers, GeM and Anurag Awasthi, Chief. Manager - Social Impact and inclusive seller growth, training, and communication, GeM emphasized that 23,000+ startups are registered with GeM and have generated 230 billion+ GMV since inception. The discussion revolved around the role of GeM for startups, its programs such as Startup Runway - a showcase of innovative products and solutions from the finest Startups in India across domains such as Agritech, AI, AR/VR, Blockchain, Manufacturing, EdTech, and Healthtech among others, Womaniya - a dedicated program for women entrepreneurs and GeM Sahay - a complete financing solution for proprietorships. In addition, meaningful discussions were covered around payment and financing mechanisms, grievance redressal for buyers and sellers, and other operational mechanisms.
Startup Mahakumbh onboards top unicorns in the sponsors list, with Games 24X7, Oyo and Info Edge as Unicorn Gold sponsors, Dream11, Flipkart, Infra Market, Moglix, Nykaa as Unicorn Silver sponsors, BharatPe and Razorpay as Unicorn Bronze sponsors. The list of AIF sponsors includes Accel, Rukam Capital and Peak XV in the gold category, Aavishkar Group, Elevation Capital, Iron Pillar in the silver sponsorship category and Avendus Capital, Chiratae Ventures, Fireside Ventures, IvyCap Ventures and Sorin Investments in the bronze category of AIF sponsors.
The event also provides opportunity to Indian startups to connect with event partners including Dalmia Bharat & Google (silver partners), Acko, Captain Fresh, Mobile Premier League (MPL), Jetsynthesis, Tally (bronze partners), IAN & Blume Ventures (session partners), IDFC First Bank (Bank partner), MM Active & India Mobile Congress (IMC) (Event partners) and Indian School of Business (ISB) (Academic partner).
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